US homelessness has fallen for a second year as rents have flattened. In Spain, rents have almost doubled in a decade and workers have just staged a general strike over housing.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 698,425 people without a home on a single night in January. That’s 6.3% fewer than in 2025, and nearly 10% below the record of 771,480 set in 2024. Even so, Scott Turner, the US housing secretary, says homelessness “remains near a historic high.”
Jared Schachner of the University of Southern California reaches a similar figure in an estimate for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. He puts the 2026 total at about 693,000, the largest one-year drop since his series began in 2007.
US rents stopped rising over the same period. Asking rents fell 0.4% in the year to September, to a national median of $1,388. The figures come from the listings site Apartment List, a commercial source.
In Spain, rents have moved the other way, almost doubling in a decade. On 11 November the CCOO and UGT unions led the country’s first general strike since 2012, under the slogan “Salaries. Housing. Prices.” Tens of thousands joined protests in Barcelona and Madrid, 18 days before a snap election.
Rising rents correlate with homelessness
US government auditors measured that link in 2020. The Government Accountability Office found that a $100 rise in median monthly rent was associated with a 9% rise in homelessness. Its analysis used data from 2012 to 2018. Of the 11 places it studied where homelessness rose, seven named housing costs as a primary cause.
Europe’s increases have been far larger. EU house prices rose 64.9% between 2015 and the third quarter of 2025, while rents rose 21.8%. In Portugal, prices rose 180% over the decade to the end of 2025. Spain’s average rent for a whole flat has reached €1,176 a month, according to the Spanish Youth Council. That’s close to the average young person’s monthly salary of €1,190.
The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency says rising housing costs are pushing more Europeans into homelessness. FEANTSA, the European homelessness federation, estimates that nearly 1.3 million people were homeless in the EU in 2025. In Spain, 28,552 people used homeless shelters or meal centres in 2022, according to the statistics office INE. That was 24.5% more than in 2012, and 16.1% of them gave eviction as the reason.
England follows the same pattern
Private rents in England are still rising, by 4.0% in the year to September, to an average of £1,466 a month. Homelessness there has kept climbing too. Councils had 135,580 households in temporary accommodation at the end of March, a record and 3.6% more than a year earlier.
Those households included 177,530 children. The end of a private tenancy was the most common reason households sought help to avoid homelessness, at 36% of cases. It has been one of the top two reasons every quarter since 2018.
Why the US numbers turned
Softer rents are part of the explanation offered by Ann Oliva, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. She also credits housing programmes, especially for veterans, where she says investment is “much closer to the scale of need.” Veteran homelessness fell more than 7% in the latest count, and nearly 60% since 2010.
HUD credits other causes, including border security, immigration policy and the encampment crackdowns that followed a 2024 Supreme Court ruling. Devon Kurtz, public safety policy director at the Cicero Institute, points to four cities whose shelters filled with asylum seekers. New York, Chicago, Boston and Denver account for half of the recent drop, he says.
Oliva says cities with encampment bans “actually did worse than the national average.” Chronic homelessness, meanwhile, barely moved.
Spain and Portugal choose opposite fixes
Spain’s unions want a crackdown on property speculation and more state intervention in the housing market. The Bank of Spain estimates the country is 750,000 homes short of what it needs. It says the gap could exceed one million by 2028.
Portugal’s government is moving the other way, with a bill that would make evictions easier and end rent caps on new leases. In October, Lisbon police cleared a protest camp of more than 100 tents and made 25 arrests. The Bank of Portugal puts the country’s shortfall at 300,000 homes.
The US figures suggest homelessness can fall quickly when rents stop rising and housing help reaches people. HUD’s full annual report, still unpublished, will show whether its city-level data supports Kurtz’s reading. In Europe, Spain’s election on 29 November and England’s next quarterly figures will show whether governments can stop rents turning into lost homes.
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